Thu, December 4, 2003

Without Rupert, can life on the island continue? Well, it turns out, it can and it can't. Obviously, he's not as important as he believed, and of course the remaining contestants are able to survive and continue to make it through the challenges. (Although, Darrah does win one, so things are a tad out of whack.) (It should be noted, however, that the contest in question was invented by a fourteen year old girl. For cute. Next, she'll be stitching shoes for Nike.) On the other hand, the ability of the remaining competitors to play the game seems a tad disrupted, and the strategies and alliances are all the hell over the place. Mainly, it seems that without Rupert around, nobody quite knows what to do. I'm not talking about the "survival" stuff here; I mean the other 19 hours of each day. Like him or hate him, Rupert managed to fill the time. What with all the attention people paid him, and the additional attention he demanded furiously, it kept things poppin'!

Now, it's kind of a different tale. The teammates are immediately at each other's throats and throwing rationality to the wind – hurling random accusations about fish-smuggling and meal-sabotaging. I can't say that I particularly understand any of what happens here, but it seems like Sandra succumbs to her usual bitchy routine and then suffers an honest accident which results in the fish being cast onto the jungle floor. Inexplicably, she withholds this story during the hoopla, allowing her supposed ally Christa to take the heat in between lurching sobs. I don't get it because even though Sandra's motives were ridiculous, her spilling of the fish was apparently accidental, so it's a story that would seemingly go over a lot better than Christa's plaintive wailing. Sandra seems to avoid confessing because she's afraid the others will turn against her, but at this point having Christa around is just about her only hope, so shouldn't she risk a little animosity to save Christa from a lot of it? (Once a bitch, always a bitch, I guess.) Anyway, it seems to wash over by morning, although you would think the newfound evidence (fish on the ground) would whip everyone into more of a frenzy. Perhaps it's because of the reward challenge.

The reward challenge is another in the series of challenges where the reward isn't really quite what Probst says it is. ("Youwannnnnaknow what'cher not playing for?") I think I mentioned how the food challenges are sort of lame – a smorgasbord at this stage of the game is pretty useless, because if you gorge, you'll just shock your system and be sluggish and crampy for the next challenge; the food reward is really about going off in private with one other person. This week is sort of the same, only more so. Samier. The reward is that you get to spend the day with your visiting loved one, having the camp all to yourself. So, what you're really playing for – as far as the game is concerned – is the opportunity not to have to spend the night away from camp with the others. The loved one is fun and all, and if it's a conjugal visit, all the better. But it offers little real advantage in terms of the game. It's not like the loved one even sticks around to help you win individual immunity the next day. (Which would have been awesome! Note to Burnett: Somebody left the Stereomagnaphonic Photon Laser Twist Gun at the cleaners, right when we needed it most.) It's just a few hours talking to someone from home and forcing them to eat twigs instead of Twizzlers like the rest of the loved ones who have already boarded the Fantasy Cruise Ship of Luxury and headed back to the mainland for showers, Big Macs, and Brady Bunch reruns. Kind of pointless.

Which is why it seems super-ultra-pointless for Jon and his pal to lie about the death of his grandma. For some reason, way in advance of the start of the game, Jon told his pal that if he should come to visit, he should say that Jon's grandma died. When in fact, she hasn't. At least not as far as Jon knows. I suppose from Jon's point of view it's relatively likely that Survivor will pull the same stunt they've done the past few years and send loved ones to participate in a challenge, so there's no harm in setting such a strategy in place, just in case. (In fact, I wish this were a year in which they send videos instead; maybe the pal would've staged a fake funeral and everything.) So, I applaud the preparedness. I just don't get for one second why anyone would do it. Jon talks about seizing any possible advantage, but I don't really see the advantage. He's lucky enough that this is one of those infuriating challenges in which you don't win – you just avoid losing. Rather than having particular skill, you just manage not to get votes from the others in succession. If it were set up so that each wrong answer resulted in a step backward, that would be fine. But it's the right answers that yield a vote to send someone else a step back. What? And it can be anyone else! Not just someone who got it wrong. Sheesh. Anyway, this setup allows Johnny Asshat to play the sympathy card and win the reward, so his little trick at least pays off that much, but... So?

And, also, why don't the others figure it out? A few of them mention feeling suspicious. And it's entirely within Jon's character to fabricate something like this, and more than a little unlike him to be sentimental, grandma or no. In a real emergency, he'd be given time to talk to his pal after the challenge wraps up. No Survivor producer is going to be so evil as to say, "Well, them's the breaks. I'm sure you'll hear about it whenever you get voted off!" They called that one girl on Big Brother to tell her that her cousin had been lost in the WTC attack, and offered to let her go home; I'm sure they'd extend the same courtesy for an actual grandma. And what information does he really need from the pal, anyway? "How? When? Any pain? Okay, then – enjoy your Twizzlers!" It's silly. Sure, it's easy for me to make that call now, with all the footage laid out in front of me, and none of the pressures of trying to play the game while I weigh the evidence. Sure! Yeah! It is easy! Wanna make something of it? They should've smelled a rat.

He gets away with it, though. And apparently none of the other contestants will find out about it until the episode airs, so I suppose he just keeps on getting away with it. Wow. Pretty impressive from a gambling standpoint, though. How could he be so sure – before even starting the game – that such egregious tampering would be seen by the show's producers as "within the rules"? If they simply think, "No, that's too much" and tell the other competitors, Johnny Fairplay turns into Johnny Thirdjurymember in no time flat. As a matter of fact, he might even become Johnny Suspiciousstabbing. But Probst and the cameramen are absolutely mum. Between this and Sandra's lie of omission, they know more secrets than the crazy, glowy-eyed British kids in "The Bloodening," but they manage to keep their cool and not blab about it. ("You and the bootblack have been rodgering the fishwife in the crumpet shoppe!") Whether or not it offers Jon an advantage, this trick is certainly not within the spirit of the game. So, I'm surprised he doesn't get called on it. Maybe he checked the contract; he never seems worried at all.

(Arksie made the magnificent point that the grandma that's repeatedly referred to as "alive and well" is only one out of a possible two grandmas. Which means that another grandma is also alive and well, but simply doesn't merit consideration as the grandma that has shuffled off this mortal coil in the Cleverly Masterminded Fantasy World of Jon. Or, that she's already actually dead. Either way, not much respect for Grandma B.) (By the way, how hilarious would it be if, by the time Jon returns home from the Pearl Islands, Grandma A actually has died? Serves him right! No disrespect intended to Grandma A – I'm sure she's a lovely and decent woman who even has robot insurance – but she won't live forever, and if Johnny Wolfcry can taste the bitter irony of karma, then at least her passing won't have been in vain.) (Also, how sad would it be if Grandma A is already dead at this point, and Jon just thinks the pal is pretending? "No, dude! Your grandma died!" "Uh, we won the challenge, man. Drop the act." "Jon, listen to me – " "I get it! Well played! But they're gone, so you can stop now.")

Side note: (Yes, we've just had an entirely parenthetic paragraph – my patented Parenthetagraph – and now I'm interrupting further. You try to write coherently at three in the damn morning!) Driving down Wilshire this evening I noticed that the Laemmle Music Hall Theatre is showing House of Sand and Fog and the marquee says GUILD ONLY right under it. First, I thought "Odd. I assume that means SAG and it seems like an odd restriction. I guess it has to do with nominations for the SAG awards in February, since nomination ballots go out week after next." But then I thought, "So, why put House of Sand and Fog on the marquee, then? The guild people must have received invitations. You're just teasing people who drive by and see the sign and try to buy a ticket." Then, it hit me. "Maybe Guild Only is just the title of another film. Hoo boy, I bet that's put a dent in ticket sales for House of Sand and Fog!" So, I've decided to make a movie entitled Closed For Renovation just to see what happens. It's a lot like my script idea called 3-2-1 Hijack! about a group of twentysomethings who make training videos for airline hijackers as a sort of joke or performance piece or something. It's a film I want to make just to see what the "edited for in-flight viewing" version looks like. (Both brilliant ideas are ©Me, by the way, so don't go stealin' 'em!)

Meanwhile, back in the vicinity of the point, Jon credits his little scheme for his ability to swing Christa and Sandra into busting up the only alliance they can ever expect to benefit them and get rid of Tijuana instead of himself, Burton, or Lil. I don't know. He "swears on his grandma" that he's not misleading them, but who can say whether or not this is the reason they lose touch with reality and wave goodbye to a perfectly solid 4-3 vote which represents an unparalleled opportunity to get back in the game just one week after their Invincible Alliance went kaput. I still say that – these girls know Jon – any affected sincerity, no matter how genuine it may seem, has to be regarded with suspicion. Plus, even if he's being forthright, his threesome is making the same mistake that Christa, Sandra, and Rupert made. It's crystal clear that their intended final three excludes Christa and Sandra; so, why not take a chance with the Morganettes – at least that's a pecking order you can conceivably stay atop! It's madness.

I guess I'm particularly edgy because this whole theory of how Jon will ride the "We'll vote Jon off next week" thing to victory is starting to seem more and more probable. They're going to run out of "next week"s before long, people! We've seen it before! They put it off for a couple more weeks, he wins a freak immunity challenge (who wants to bet it's the "Ugliest, Curliest Hair" challenge?) and then – poof! – Johnny New SUV Driver. I shudder at the thought.

***

It should come as no surprise that Rupert backed out of the traditional Monday night appearance on David Letterman's Late Show which each eliminated Survivor contestant ordinarily undergoes. I'm surprised it isn't a contractual obligation like returning for the reunion show. It's a shame – not because I particularly care what Rupert would have to say; it just would have been cool to see two of the three most important Ruperts in television today, sharing the screen.

POLL:

Iko Iko An Nay

The thing where Jon and his buddy lied about the death of Jon's grandmother?

	Dumb
	Awesome

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